(1998) "A woman is born to be both more and less than a man," Bolek Pszoniak (Gabriel Bryne), a gentle-hearted Polish baker, philosophizes: "She must be above him and beneath him."

His wife Jadzia (Lena Olin), a cleaning woman who goes out to what she says are the Polish Women's Auxiliary League meetings on the nights Bolek has off (the truth of some things is best suppressed, not spoken), replies to his questioning her faith's foundation: "Nothing is more sacred to me than this - making life and love. That is my religion." To her Jewish lover, Roman Krull (Rade Serbedzija), after confessing that she can't remember the reason she married her spouse, she boasts of having a husband and a home: "I am a queen. I have five children. I am a queen."

Her only daughter Halczia (Claire Danes) - a high-school dropout who smokes and drinks, torments young men, and dares Russell Schuster (Adam Trese), a local cop who pursues her one night, with: "How bold are you?" - is chosen by Fr Don to be this year's representative of "innocence, chastity, and purity" at the head of the procession for the Festival of the Virgin.

For each woman, including Jadzia's son Ziggy's Syrian wife Sofie (Mili Avital), in this household occupying a duplex in Detroit, as depicted in director/writer Theresa Connell's amusing ethnic drama, without a first born there wouldn't have been a wedding.

Out late at the bakery with her father (who regards her like himself as a sensitive creature), Hala tells him: "My clock stopped." Her mother sends her over to Russell's house in Sofie's wedding dress. "I'm not ready for a family," Russell protests her appeal. "Am I?" she replies. "Girls are always ready," he answers: "Ready and waiting."

But then he asks: "Wouldn't you rather be free?" Both above and beneath Russell, Hala is her mother's daughter, devoted to making love ("Don't ever stop") and life.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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